Henry Alley

Born in 1945, he grew up in Seattle, Washington, studied English literature and classics at Stanford University, and later earned both an MFA in fiction writing and a Ph.D. in prose fiction from Cornell University.

Over the course of his career, he taught literature at several universities, including the University of Oregon, where he became an emeritus professor. Alongside his academic work, he published novels such as Through Glass, The Lattice, Umbrella of Glass, Precincts of Light, Men Touching, and Galen's Legacy, as well as the short story collection The Dahlia Field.

He has also written literary criticism, including a book on the novels of George Eliot, and his stories and essays have appeared in a range of journals over many years. After coming out in the 1980s, he brought more openly gay themes into his fiction, a shift that became an important part of his later work.